S. decides that what he wants is important. He doesn’t add too much poison to kill but enough to create embarrassments. S. feels levity on this. He views a somewhat poetry to the yet to happen scene:

“a thousand individual rebellions from within, a thousand purges of the foulness these people have gulped down in their lives and their work.”

S.wonders what fate Edvar VI should deserve? A severe fate like Edvar V? Or is Edvar VI a different man than his father?

In the margins, Eric mentions that Moody was baiting him, trying to get him to blow up. But Eric thinks of Jen telling him that what Moody thought doesn’t matter and believes that there are more important things.

In the footnote, FXC writes that the concept of “what a man wants” also appeared in chapter 26 of The Viper’s Humor, but doesn’t have the same view as what is written in Ship of Theseus. Jen and Eric discuss on why Straka had a change in mind about this matter. When Eric asked FXC, she said it was “her/our secret.”